Donald Trump and his Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, ordered about 800 U.S. generals and admirals flown in from around the world to hear in person what Trump and Hegseth expect of them. It is the first time ever that such a number of the entire top military command were pulled away from all their duties at once and gathered in the same auditorium at the same time. Although the staged spectacle seemed illogical and even comical in some ways, it also reaffirmed Trump’s dark and repressive vision for the role of these officers and their troops in the coming years.
Trump and Hegseth basically treated it as a typical Trump campaign rally, throwing out the typical lines that get their devoted followers laughing, booing, or cheering wildly. But instead of a crowd of cheering supporters, the audience was hundreds of generals and admirals. These high-ranking officers have actually fought in and commanded soldiers or sailors in numerous types of warfare, have together thousands of years of military experience, and they all likely take their jobs extremely seriously. Yet they were forced to sit quietly and listen to two men who have done none of those things. The experienced officers may have either wanted to laugh at the ignorance of the con-men standing in front of them, or may have felt insulted at being forced to listen to these far less qualified people telling them that they’ve been too woke and soft. Black, female, and other minority officers in attendance must have felt particularly sickened, as the entire presentation told them to their faces that they got their jobs only because of their skin color or gender.
But after getting past the lies and theatrical nature of the event, Trump and Hegseth were consistent on two things that are deadly serious for working and poor people.
The first point was made by Hegseth, who told the officers in the room that they and their forces have now been “liberated.” But liberated from what? It is clear that he is liberating them from any rules or restrictions on their level of violence. Trump and Hegseth have both openly encouraged police and the military to be more aggressive and more lethal. They have both rewarded those like a Navy SEAL who killed a prisoner in custody, a former Marine who publicly killed a homeless man on a New York City subway, those who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and more. Hegseth regularly uses the words lethal and lethality to describe what he wants from the military. Although the U.S. military may already be the most lethal military in world history, his words are a green light to all members of the armed forces that they can and should be even more violent, and that they should fear no repercussions. In fact, they will likely be rewarded for it.
While this might be taken by traditional military leaders and soldiers to mean that they should become even more lethal towards people in other countries, Trump’s speech added the second point on which he has also been consistent in recent years. He said clearly that “we should use some of these dangerous cities [in the U.S.] as training grounds” and “it’s the enemy from within” that U.S. armed forces should focus on. He has said this before, and he clearly believes that he has what he calls “homegrowns” and “vermin,” internal enemies who were born and raised here. And he’s urging military leaders to help him take up the fight and use their violent capabilities against us.
Trump’s regime is doing everything possible to rally their forces, namely the police and military, in preparation for the widespread use of force against the population. Trump’s words and actions mimic closely those of fascist leaders like Mussolini and Hitler, who in the 1920s and 1930s used the state to conduct institutional civil war against their class enemies – the working class and peasants, many of whom were socialists and communists. Just as those fascists knew that to preserve the profits of the largest capitalist families and their corporations, they had to go to war with and suppress their working classes, Trump and his vicious underlings understand this as well.
We should all be terrified by this knowledge, because we will suffer most from increasing repression. They are telling us what’s coming. We should take them seriously.
But the success of their repression isn’t inevitable. They will only succeed if we give in and don’t stand up and speak out. Working-class people are the large majority of the population. We do the work. We make their system run, and our labor creates their profits.
If we organize and unite as a class, we can bring their system to a halt and challenge their position of power itself. Our decisions and actions can change the balance of forces. Trump-loyal generals or not, our future is up to us.
